The Woman Who Let it All Go by Steve Klepetar

She woke to rain battering her roof,

felt wet wind through window screens.

Slowly she released her breath, watched

its white thread rise among soaking clouds.

Her eyes ate puddles stippled with drops.

Slowly she loosened her hair, let it spill

to the floor, where it hissed and smoked

and disappeared. She unhooked her nose,

dropped her ears into a bucket of ice,

carefully tucked her smile into a blue

leather bag.  As the wind died and clouds

broke and drifted east, she unzipped

her skin, stepping out into the hall. 

“Now,” she whispered in a new voice

brimming with gravity’s pull. All over

the sodden yard, oaks shivered, late

blooming lilies swayed. Then she opened

her chest, felt it throbbing there, her burning core. 

Steve Klepetar's work has received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.  His chapbook, My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto, was recently published by Flutter Press.